Dark Elves of Darkreach

This thread is for discussion on the Dark Elves of Darkreach - a sinister faction comprised of dark elves, ice dragons, shades, shadows, and Aazhaleek the Shadow Dragon!

“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way” - C.S. Lewis
"I'm not sure God wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to love, and be loved. But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery. Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering." - C.S. Lewis

Shadow Step warriors are a risky investment. While they can be devastating when they get initiative and fight offensively, they will get wiped off the board quickly if they are used defensively at all. To make sure you get initiative 2 Spy SAs are very handy. Ganging up on models is also very important when figuring out how to use the Shadow Steps, that way you can prevent a model from taking defensive strike completely if it's killed. I would rarely take fewer than 6 in a single troop.

The Phase Cat is a perfect model to use Swap with. Once your archers have been engaged you can swap them somewhere else and put the Cat into B2B with an enemy.

Since Blink models don't get any run or charge bonuses, buying a Musician is usually worth the points.

Avrix Dirthe, Champion is a great model to cast Iron Skin on, so think about pairing him up with Liela or the Majestrix. That DV 13 + DR/2 can pretty much stop all damage from any defensive strikes that he makes.

There is a lot more to play with and I'll continue to share strategies as I mix and match new troops.

What I have found with the Swap FA is that I use it best when I include the idea in my build, but not necessarily build the list around it. That is, you can count on being able to get a a couple of worthwhile blinks a game, but its not like you will be using it every turn. So, why would I build a whole list around something that will only happen a couple times in the game. Can those two times be significant? Yes, very. But its still only 2, 3 at the most.

So, I might do a troop of the Shadowsteps, but I personally wouldnt do more than 1 troop of them. I love them, but as Adam said they fill their roll, just not a roll that you want to build whole list around.

The theme to this list is very similar to the Darkspawn Daisy Chain. It is the idea of getting up in your opponent's face quickly. Doesnt always guarantee success, but it does create havoc with whatever plans they brought with them when they walked in the door. The good part about this list is there are several tweaks that can be made to it to flavor it more to the user's personal style (like adding a familiar to Liela, or swapping Zeshin for casting leader just to name a couple).

The set up to the game plan is to either start with the Shadow Demon and 3 shade beasts on the side lines, or the shadow demon, 2 phase cats, and a shade demon, or some combination there of, on the side line... (they are all summonable so figure out which combo works best for you)

When the time is right to pull the trigger, which figuring that out is usually the toughest part to this plan, you have Liela teleport Nanuranidd towards the enemy. Then depending on where he ends up and what is around him, either blinks and then summons, or summons and then blinks. He would be summoning either the shade beasts or the phase cats depending on what you chose to park on the side. Hopefully when you summon them, you are able to summon them into b2b with the enemy where they can promptly take a few bites.

Next, you use the faction doctrine to swap Nanuranidd with the Sinmeister, where again depending on what your surrounding situation is, he will be summoning the demon and then fighting, or moving or whatever the situation dictates. And the demon can either fight, roar, or just get in a defensive position to protect the Sinster.

More optional things that could happen are that Nuranidd was able to cast a spell after being teleported but before summoning (since the player is able to dictate the order in which the spells are cast) instead of doing a move and summon. Or if the enemy is already close enough, you might teleport the Sinster instead (who summons the demon) and then let demon roar get all the soldiers ripe for whatever Nuranidd summons second (as you would be swapping Nuranidd in for Sinster and getting Sinster out of harms way).

Anyway, you get the idea.. Lots of possible options here, as long as you are able to the pull the trigger at the right time and your opponents aren't all burrowed, flying, or spread out so far that you cant do anything really productive with your summons.

Basically, this docterine is built around pairing up smaller bases with larger bases. The smaller based models gain dodge. There is some more to it, but that is the basis for this list. Obviously, the one downside to this list is that it doesnt help at all against shooter heavy lists..

Anyway, nothing tricky about this list, just gotta keep your smaller based models playing pin ball with your bigger models to try and keep that bonus defense alive..

Finally, this list is one that I have not played yet, but it should be a blast when I do get it. I like playing different factions all the time so it might be a few weeks before i rotate back around to get to try this one out, but I will report in once i do...

This is really, what amounts to a Darkreach muscle list, or at least to some degree anyway...

If I made any change, it might be to swap the Dragon for a second phase cat so that I could put the boots on Zalash. This would also give more swapping buddies on the table. Zalash has been a super star for me on more than one occasion. Anyway, the theme to this entire list is ALL about the Sinmeister and his Abyssal sword. Liela and her familiar's sole job is to keep Sinisthreax Iron Skinned for as long as possible, while he hacks and slashes everything in sight and heals his minions in the process.

Fairly simple and straight forward.

The dragon has the air ability to go after casters and ranged attackers. The phase kitty is there to cause general havoc as usual. Usually I have the Kitty move across the board and soften up a harder target and then have him swap with Zalash who can jump in and finish the job with assassin.

My only concern would be the ratio of front line grunts to xbows. You need to have a picket line that holds up long enough to let those x-bows do their work. I like a ratio somewhere around 3- or even 4-to-1. Maybe scale back to only 4 of them, and fit in some more front line models? Also, I'd move the Abyssal Weapon to Arvix. He's got the best stats to make it work more than once; same number of tracks, better DV, better MAC, plus Cleave. It also focuses Majestrix back to her role of being a caster - even tho she has a good MAV, make no mistake; her primary role comes from her CP 8, 15 SP, and 3 magic Tomes.

My notes: Avrix is an awesome warrior. It's much better than Phase Cat or Zeshin, but in some armies I use more mobile units. Zalash with parry is great at holding enemy best unit until your other forces can swarm it and kill it. Please visit BloodyBeast.com for some Warlord battle reports.

Main thing behind this list is simply number of swings brought to the table.

First thing, dont forget ranger moves if you want to use them.

Liela casts Adrenaline on her troop and they will race across the board using their displace to survive the trip, then charge stuff and use their rage to try to pull off the WL special ability of poisoning on well placed hits. So, their targets will die either outright or via poison at the end of the turn. Either way, they then try to disengage and do another raged charge against another target the next turn.

Liela can then teleport the Sinmeister across to an unsuspecting victim or give him iron skin depending on the need. Cool part is, then Sinmeister can attack the target and then use the faction ability to swap out with the phase cat if the situation dictates it.

Nightshade warriors are the mop up the wounded crew to finish off what the shadebeasts started. Use parry to survive on defense then focus and swing away on offense.

Phase cat does his usual of garnering the main attention of the enemy and use that to my advantage to pull enemy models away from other areas of the battle.

Nanur-nanur has several options depending on the opponent, ranging from poison clouds to beguiling stuns to domination...

If I made any changes it would be drop 1 shade beast for: book of tactics, familiar for liela, and Abyssal weapon for Zalash

Does anybody else find it odd, by the way, that the information age has led to language becoming an oblique and imprecise tool where even the most straightforward phrasing is pored over with chicken entrails and bone tossing to divine the true meaning?

It's no DR or DV 13, but 5 DTs (mostly at DV 10) plus Displaced and Bludgeon aren't a bad combo. The cat is nice in its own right, but the demon can paired with soldiers for Support. A nicely timed Summoning right behind a line of grunts sets you up for the Roar opportunity, opening the door to let your soldiers in the troop do some serious slaughtering.